Vronsky’s enthusiasm for painting and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture. The picture came to a stop. He vaguely felt that its defects, little noticeable in the beginning, would become striking if he went on. The same thing happened with him as with Golenishchev, who felt he had nothing to say and kept deceiving himself by saying that his thought had not ripened, that he was nurturing it and preparing his materials. But Golenishchev was embittered and tormented by it, while Vronsky could not deceive and torment himself, still less become embittered. With his peculiar resoluteness of character, without explaining anything or justifying himself, he ceased to occupy himself with painting.
But without this occupation his life and Anna‘s, who was surprised by his disappointment, seemed so boring to him in this Italian town, the palazzo suddenly became so obviously old and dirty, so unpleasant the sight of the stains on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the chipped stucco of the cornices, and so boring became this ever-the-same Golenishchev, the Italian professor, and the German traveller, that a change of life was necessary. They decided to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Vronsky intended to make a division of property with his brother, and Anna to see her son. The summer they planned to spend on Vronsky’s big family estate.
XIV
Levin had been married for three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected. At every step he found disenchantment with his old dream and a new, unexpected enchantment. He was happy, but, having entered upon family life, he saw at every step that it was not what he had imagined. At every step he felt like a man who, after having admired a little boat going smoothly and happily on a lake, then got into this boat. He saw that it was not enough to sit straight without rocking; he also had to keep in mind, not forgetting for a minute, where he was going, that there was water underneath, that he had to row and his unaccustomed hands hurt, that it was easy only to look at, but doing it, while very joyful, was also very difficult.
As a bachelor, seeing the married life of others, their trifling cares, quarrels, jealousy, he used only to smile scornfully to himself. In his own future married life, he was convinced, there not only could be nothing like that, but even all its external forms, it seemed to him, were bound to be in every way completely unlike other people’s lives. And suddenly, instead of that, his life with his wife did not form itself in any special way, but was, on the contrary, formed entirely of those insignificant trifles he had scorned so much before, but which now, against his will, acquired an extraordinary and irrefutable significance. And Levin saw that to arrange all those trifles was by no means as easy as it had seemed to him before. Though he had thought that he had the most precise notions of family life, he had, like all men, involuntarily pictured it to himself only as the enjoyment of love, which nothing should hinder and from which trifling cares should not detract. He was supposed, as he understood it, to do his work and to rest from it in the happiness of love. She was supposed to be loved and only that. But, like all men, he had forgotten that she also needed to work. And he was surprised at how she, this poetic, lovely Kitty, in the very first, not weeks, but days of married life, could think, remember and fuss about tablecloths, furniture, mattresses for guests, about a tray, the cook, the dinner and so on. While still her fiance, he had been struck by the definitiveness with which she had renounced going abroad and decided to go to the country, as if she knew something necessary and, besides her love, could still think of extraneous things. This had offended him then, and now, too, her petty fussing and cares several times offended him. But he saw that she needed it. And loving her as he did, though he did not understand why, though he chuckled at those cares, he could not help admiring them. He chuckled at her arranging the furniture brought from Moscow, decorating her room and his in a new way, hanging curtains, assigning future quarters for guests, for Dolly, setting up quarters for her new maid, giving the old cook orders for dinner, getting into arguments with Agafya Mikhailovna, dismissing her from her charge of the provisions. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders; he saw how Agafya Mikhailovna thoughtfully and gently shook her head at the young mistress’s new instructions in the pantry; he saw how extraordinarily sweet Kitty was when she came to him, laughing and crying, to tell him that the maid Masha kept treating her like a young girl and because of it no one listened to her. It seemed sweet to him but strange, and he thought it would have been better without it.
